Most Varied and Unique Pearls for Swans

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Gifts of Sri Sai Baba

Most Varied and Unique Pearls

for Swans

By Sri

Narasimha Swamiji

We find ourselves awake at night,

Disturbed about another's plight. Not things that have, but things that might

befall a loved one, out of sight. We want to stretch protective arms, or help

by sounding out alarms, or even use some ancient charms to obviate potential

harms. Our efforts seem go for naught, and worry doesn't help, we’re

taught. It doesn't have the strength it ought, to do the job our heart has

sought. There is a way that we many turn to seek the answers we should learn,

and get the strength for which we yearn, provide the cure for our concern.

 

" Newton's dog, his fellowmen and Newton all looked, at Nature and saw apples fall. The

first looked on and derived no benefit. The second ran up and ate the fruits. Newton alone discovered the Law of Gravitation which

has served mankind, as a useful theory or hypothesis to explain many facts of

Nature.

 

All sorts of men and women have approached Sri Sai Baba. Some have returned without any benefit. Some

received much of temporal goods with just a taste of the spiritual; others,

higher and higher spiritual goods. Every one received what he was fit to

receive. Baba, the Universal mother that he was, impartially offered his gifts,

nay, scattered them before his visitors; but the crows picked up the offal and

the swans, the pearls.

 

It was in accordance with the capacity, the receptivity and the

circumstances of each visitor due to his Karma Rinanubandha,

i.e., prenatal merits and ties, that Baba's gifts were effective; and hence

spiritual benefits received from him are of a very varied description. Anything

like an exhaustive statement of them being impossible, we may content ourselves

here with a set or samples.

 

That Boundless Love:

When people talk of God, to most He is a word and nothing more.

They know how to use it for their worldly purposes, nothing what effect it has

on the hearer. Convention and current feeling invest its use

with a certain dignity and telling force, especially in oaths and curses.

But how few have felt at all or in any appreciable degree the sacred awe, the

first basis of the idea of the Holy or that far higher feeling of all consuming

all-sacrificing boundless Love! For too many have been begotten or brought up

in godless families amidst cheerless, cramped and darkened surroundings where

the words and conduct of the parents, relations and friends are really a

stifling negation of God, conscience and the moral principle, sometimes nominally veiled by an occasional observance of forms of

worship are reference to God. Some of these are at times candid enough to admit

and sometimes to bemoan the fact that they could never conceive of, much less

experience God in their lives.

 

Spiritual Rebirth, First step in God-Realisation:

The greatest service Sri Sai rendered

and renders to mankind is to save such souls from their utter darkness, to show

them the existence in himself and elsewhere, of vast power, vast knowledge,

vast goodness and self-forgetting Love which blesses him that gives and him

that receives and to make them float on waves of joy and happiness, hither to

inexperienced. Rudely shaken from or terrified out of their prolonged stupor

and indifference they just receive a few gleams of light into their sin soiled

eyes, feel a glow of gratitude, love and other noble emotions in their chilled

hearts, begin their spiritual birth and see or feel their God in Sai, their real Savior. For the first time, they get a

rudimentary idea of Sri Sai and know God. He is the

giver of the God-idea to them and is God, in their view and it may be their

only God.

 

The benefit is by no means confined to this class just described.

Persons, who start life better, fall into evil ways, get tainted by wicked

company, sunk in voice and sin from drama and cinema songs and street talk,

lose their early innocence and receptivity, become thoroughly care-hardened,

sneer at purity and piety and blatantly proclaim their imperviousness to godly

influence. To such, Sai has many times restored, in

some degree, their lost innocence by making them feel that they see God in him

and in his devotees. Some cultured and English educated persons that this

writer met have confessed to him that Baba, who has restored their faiths, is

God to them, that in their present life of holiness the foregrounds are fully

occupied by Baba, and that Rama, Krishna, Siva, Datta and Pandarinath get their halo of glory through Baba. One lady

said " Krishna no doubt appeals to me and attracts me. But

Baba who often appears and instructs me in visions is a hundred times more

powerful " .

 

The need for a noble " Superman " that leads one to God is

at its height in the case of advanced spiritual aspirants who style him their Samartha Sadguru and derive from

him the maximum benefit that a human being can enjoy. Realisation

of the Ishta devata,

perpetual enjoyment of Heaven at His feet, attainment of Adwaitic

Bliss or Nirvana Sukha can alike be

had at the guru's feet and there alone.

 

A Warning:

Sri Sai Baba showered

his benefits on thousands in a variety of ways. Some only of these have been

revealed to this writer; and these may be a sample of his gift to others. But

one cannot be sure that the highest have been yet made public. However that may

be, before proceeding to give a very brief sketch of these, the writer has one

request to make or a warning to give. Persons who are great admirers of

particular saints, like Krishna Chaitanya, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa,

Samartha Ramdas, Haranath or Thayumanava, should

not judge others exclusively by the life, teachings and methods of their saint

or hero. Let not Sri Sai Baba be measured on the Procreates

bed of any particular saint. Sri Sai is a rare

phenomenon by himself and his services to Humanity, if judged calmly, would be

found great enough to require a special corner in our pantheon and a

readjustment of our ideas based wholly on a few past examples. In the words of

Browning (As adapted) we must insist,

 

Our times are in His hand, Who said

" A whole I planned, past shows but half; Trust God, see all, nor be

afraid " . Add this to the rest, Take it and try its worth.

(Source Shri Sai Padananda October 1992)